Wednesday, January 18, 2012

2012 ZiPS Projections - Tampa Bay Rays

The Rays plan to win in 2012 the same way they usually do: pitching, defense, and catching just enough lightning in a bottle on offense around their core. The team is, at least by ZiPS, just behind the Red Sox for 3rd place, but the winter is over and given how relatively quiet the team has been with minor-league signings (outside of Luke Scott, they've made very few), they've still got some empty bottles to fill.

Tampa won't have that starting rotation, forever. A team competing on a budget doesn't have the luxury of stashing too many extra arms away and a trade of one of their starters could help fill holes in the lineup. While the pitching is really good, the park and excellent defenses cause them to be a bit overrated, so when the opportunity comes to take advantage of it, the team won't say no.

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I get that, of course. Moore certainly could get hurt or lose the strike zone, or both, with probability significantly greater than zero in either case. I don't see either as especially likely in his case, though.

Moore took a huge step forward last year, as difficult as that may be to believe. I was concerned a year ago that the command of the stuff wasn't coming along as well as it should and that he was very hittable when he wasn't striking guys out - but those concerns went by the board last year, when despite moving up through AA and AAA to the majors his walk rate and hit rate both dropped by nearly 1 each per nine innings. I think the only real concern now is how well he will hold up over a full season.

I think the Rays should be pretty satisfied if Moore turns out like Scott Kazmir. Yeah, he went down eventually, and was never the most reliable, but he averaged 4+ WAR over the first 4 years of his career. Considering the attrition rates of pitching prospects, I'd say that's an excellent outcome.

I didn't know there was a baseball Terry Bradshaw and he even made the majors. Any relation to the other one?

Not much to say about the projections. Not a lot of depth on the offense and they could also use a SS -- Rodriguez would actually be fine but I don't think they've shown any tendency to making him full-time there (only 49 starts there last year, 14 in Sept).

Assuming the bones in Moore's arm don't have a tendency to spontaneously break from the act of pitching then I think things will be ok. It is odd though that two of his three top comps spent the majority of their major league careers in the same organization that he is in, which has only played 14 seasons.

Surprised to see that Damon is project to not just reach 300 hits but to surpass it by 123. If he actually does that then I think it really helps his case with the BBWAA since it would show that he didn't just hang around long enough to crawl over the milestone.

Rodriguez looked fine at SS range-wise, he can cover a lot of ground at 2B and that translated well enough to short. He was much more error-prone there, nine errors of which six were on throws. There's probably an adjustment issue there with the longer throws that would be mitigated with more playing time. UZR/150 had him at -3.8 which sounds about right, if he reduces the errors then he'd be average or a tick above in the future.

The catcher situation is obviously weak but if Lobaton and Molina were to actually hit to those OPS+s then that would be acceptable enough since they're both good glove men (and Molina might be a game-calling god or something).

The fielding lines for Zobrist and Rodriguez are just fun to look at.

That looks like a HOF line for Longoria if he reaches it unless the 3B blind spot kills him too.

Guyer's projection looks about right. He's supposed to be a very good defender so if he can figure something out and take a real step forward then he could be an acceptable starter but as things are now he lacks the secondary skills to be an above average hitter. His good minor league lines are mainly BA driven without actually being a high-contact guy.

Walt, if you look at Rodriguez's game logs for '11 you'll see that the vast majority of his starts at SS were from late July on. The Rays were definitely giving him a long look at the position and unless a trade suddenly brings in somebody else then I'm pretty sure he's the everyday SS in 2012. The only thing that might make a difference is if Brignac shows up in spring training without that useless long uppercut swing and shows that he might actually be able to hit MLB pitching again. If he shows promise then he might muscle in on the position a bit but I'm pretty sure he's going to have to earn anything more than spot starts.

I did look at the game logs and he was starting SS only about half the time at the end of the year. He got pulled early in a couple of those (PH?). He got at least 2 starts in the playoffs (one of the box scores seems to be missing). Tney might give him the full-time job this year but I wouldn't count on it.

Not to mention over 1800 runs, 1000 XBH and 450 SB at a excellent rate.
I guess it would depend on when he hits the ballot and how the deluge of over qualified guys of the next few years plays out.
I really don't see how you keep him out with the totality of his career. Being a good player for ever does have alot of value.

Somebody's not doing it right, and for my sanity I hope it's Fangraphs.

One of the mysteries of these two is how much they can disagree on offense.

Fangraphs rates Rice 57 runs better on offense than b-r but both are supposedly comparing to average. Fangraphs also gives him 30 more runs of replacement value. Finally, Fangraphs doesn't seem to be penalizing him for all the DP -- he gets -46 from b-r here. (Or DP are included in the offense in which case there's an even bigger difference between the two in the value of his offense.)

I can't see why they would differ so substantially on Rice's offensive worth.

Anyway, Damon also gets 60 more runs on offense on fangraphs than he does on b-r. Fangraphs baserunning only goes back to 2002 and they rate his baserunning value substantially lower (so 44 to 27 during the common period plus 31 Rbr not counted in fangraphs). So that pretty much wipes out the offensive difference. B-r gives Damon another 62 runs in Rroe and Rdp which apparently aren't in fangraphs (or, again, the offensive difference is much greater). There's a couple wins difference on defense but this is made up by fangraphs higher replacement value.